suck the marrow out
by laratoncita
Summary: i found her in pieces. [Pre-series, post-Hale fire. Laura and Derek take New York.]
1. crack the bones open

i found her in pieces /  
i found her / live  
bleeding / i found her  
in the crevices of trees / on the streets  
like splintered bones / i found her  
in the empty sheets of our beds /  
in our house / in our city / in the places  
where we hid / i found her  
dead / in pieces

* * *

i. laura sends him off to school.

she works nights and mornings - first a shift at the nightclub ("titty bar," she says, the first time he wakes up in the morning to find her covered in glitter and sweat, "for this, we could have gone to chicago." he tries not to wince at the way the words fall, sharp, from her tongue) and then as a barista at some coffeeshop that all the columbia kids love.

she says, "i hate college kids," and he doesn't mention the fact that she dropped out the second semester of her sophomore year. he doesn't mention how much she loved the campus at reed college, or how interesting she found their dual-degree programs, or how the weekend that their family was killed was one that she was supposed to come home for.

he lets her sign him up for whatever GED testing he needs. he can't say he's a beacon hills graduate, but he'd applied to nyu on a whim back in october. he'd gotten accepted, so when they get to new york in late march, roughly two months after the fire and subsequent fallout, there's a tiny apartment rented to them from the malabe pack in the bronx, and then laura's getting everything he needs for school figured out.

the phone calls to nyu are terrifying. they shouldn't be something he needs, but he calls the admission offices anyway, and reads through the notes that laura painstakingly wrote out, recites them like he's expected to.

yes, he is an admitted student. no, he is no longer in high school. he dropped out. there were extenuating circumstances. most of his family is dead. he will be taking the ged certification in april. he has received a confirmation email.

"alright then, derek," the admissions officer says, "then all you need to do is accept the school's offer, and send your results to us once you take the test. is there anything else i can help you with?"

"no," derek says, watching laura vigorously scrub dishes, as if he didn't know she were eavesdropping, as if she didn't know his dream had been californian sun. "that's all."

* * *

ii. the malabes are not their friends.

at least, not as a whole. their alpha makes it clear that the apartment they're staying in is only theirs for the summer, and laura thanks them before nearly breaking the cheap couch that had already been in the living room when they moved in. they'll find a new place, of course they will, but it's the principle of the matter.

"are you dorming?" one of the malabes ask, when laura drags them over to speak with their matriarch. the one asking is named mireya, and she's the alpha's niece. she's about a year older than laura, and by all accounts gets along with her pretty well. she's got a constant predatory look in her eye though, one that derek instinctively shies away from.

"i haven't decided," derek says, even if he already has. he isn't going to leave laura. he'll commute, whether it takes him fifteen minutes or two hours. they'll find a place that works.

"dorm," mireya says, and shakes her hair out. she has tight curls, and dark eyes, and a smile like the cheshire cat. "val says it's useful."

"val?" he says, and she practically beams.

"my sister," she says, "valencia. she's studying education or something. has to do with kids. she's a freshman at cazenovia."

"cool," he says, for lack of anything better to say, and recedes into the living room, where a couple of the alpha's sons are willing to ignore him. they don't view him as a threat quite yet. when they leave, laura's tense, and she clutches at his elbow like she's afraid to lose him. they spend the weekend cooped up inside their apartment.

they end up in a one-room in the upper east side, 1000 a month. laura gets a job at a bar, and a coffeehouse. she tells him _please, for the love of god, don't get an english degree, freelance isn't worth it_ when he passes his ged test with ease. he ends up in their fine arts program, instead.

.

.

.

* * *

a/n: I, an American university student, have no idea if what Derek does is like, a plausible thing that could happen. Please take uni info with a grain of salt, I graduated hs and applied to uni according to the "approved college time frame" so. Also! Obligatory disclaimer: I own nothing.


	2. boil until soft

_warning for suicide ideation (part v.)_

* * *

you were born  
seraphim. connection to the gods.  
you were born  
black  
in the mountains,  
to a mother like a child.  
you were born  
of heavy bones,  
the ache of breaking dawn.

* * *

iii. his first semester he takes 13 credits and convinces himself it's enough. when laura gets home in the mornings she makes him breakfast, offers to walk him to the train station. he declines, every single time, but it doesn't stop her from asking every day.

when he gets home from his classes she's usually asleep. she'll wake up, briefly, and pad out to the kitchen, where he usually sets up all his stuff, laptop buzzing as he digs into calculus problems. the whole place will smell like pad thai, gyros, arepas - whatever he picked up for them on the way home. their bedroom has no door, and is approximately half-bed. no frame, piled with blankets. it smells like a cheap knock-off of what their home used to smell like.

"school okay?" she asks, and he always says, "great." on wednesdays and thursdays he gets home too late to see her; he works in one of the libraries, figures work-study will help him manage his time. it does, a little too well, and more often than not he finds himself curling up in bed alone, all his homework done, and trying to remember the exact way his mother's eyes would crinkle when she smiled.

he doesn't make friends. not really. laura pushes him, tries to get him to join clubs. he finds a non-credit figure drawing class instead, two hours every friday evening. he relearns the colors of fire and coal. he meets a boy named alec.

valencia malabe isn't introduced to them until thanksgiving, the first thanksgiving where it's just the two of them. laura doesn't bother pretending that they're doing anything akin to what they used to, and they take the train up to the bronx, trying to ignore the smells of the subway.

the malabes are dozens strong, scattered throughout the bronx. the alpha lives with her immediate family, with other members drifting in and out of their home as needed. it's larger on the inside than it looks, but even that doesn't erase the fact that there's a minimum of eleven people living in a four bedroom home. derek tries not to, really, but he can't help but remember that there were fourteen people in their home, and that exactly eleven perished.

and the malabes are not their friends, no, but it's thanksgiving, and laura's done nothing to make them dislike them, and their alpha is actually smiling at them today instead of watching them with eyes too predatory even for a werewolf.

"derek!" mireya exclaims, too loud, even if there's about two dozen people in the malabe home for the moment. there's a tall woman on her arm, about six-feet tall from where derek's seeing. he's right around 5'10, last he checked; "say hi to my sister. i was telling you about her last time you were here."

the woman - girl? - is valencia, then, and she smiles indulgently at her older sister. "what exactly were you talking about, then?" her skin is as dark as mireya's, her eyes nearly black even in the bright lighting of their home. she catches derek's eye and smiles, a tiny curl at the corner. she's pretty in a "rip your heart" kind of way, a calculating look in her eye that might come from simply being what she is in a city like new york, or from the way the hierarchy of the malabes is upkept. she says, "nice to meet you," and doesn't offer her hand.

"likewise," he says, before mireya's pulling her away to attend to some cousin or other, valencia's eyes still honed in on his.

* * *

iv. he fucks the boy from his art class.

alec's a sophomore, bronze hair and a habit of ducking his head when he smiles - he's unlike anyone derek knows, unlike all the women he's met, unlike everything he knew back in california. he didn't _like_ guys back then, he tells himself, but he does wonder _why not_ when he's got alec wrapped around him.

it doesn't last long. he doesn't want it to, because four months can feel like a lifetime for him. laura doesn't comment on it, though, grins slyly when she catches the new scent on him.

the house is quiet, when his scent starts to fade after finals.

"you survived," she finally says, five days into winter break, "congrats."

* * *

v. the night he takes his last final for the year ("you're a sophomore, now, you're as smart as i am!" laura had said. he'd ignored her), he takes the bus down to the hudson and just sits there for a few hours. wonders how dirty the water is, how strong the current is, how much better off laura might be if he had the audacity to throw himself in and let himself sink.

he's starting to forget what cora's favorite shows were, the songs she used to sing because she knew it would make him snap. the meals his mother used to make weren't all that appetizing, but he finds himself aching for pascina andina instead of microwaved ravioli. home doesn't exist for him, any more.

when the sun starts to set he thinks, seriously, about letting himself fall and calling it a day.

instead, he stands up, checks his backpack for his wallet, and catches a bus, then a train, back to their apartment. he walks the last half mile, walks in smelling like the docks and salt. laura watches him from beneath her fringe, doesn't ask where he's been. she curls up on top of him, that night, ear pressed to his heart. he thinks about what paige would be up to, if she'd gone to juilliard like she'd always hoped.

.

.

.


	3. suck the marrow out

_warning for miscarriage (part vii.)_

* * *

you are the yolk of fury  
slipping through fingers /  
caught on a nail, staining muslin

pearls on a tarnished chain  
blood on your mouth /  
you loved once

you loved once /  
you were, once

* * *

vi. back in california, laura had dated a guy who'd raced - she'd spend at least a weekend a month with him, down in LA. their mother had hated the guy. laura had always loved cars, though, and she was good about telling talia about everything that went down, where she'd be, how long she was gone. it wasn't one of her prouder moments, but talia had tolerated it for laura's sake, even if she hadn't hidden her pleasure when laura finally broke up with the guy after a good two years of dating, just before she left for oregon.

he dies the weekend before thanksgiving, and laura is inconsolable the day she gets the news - the funeral's on wednesday, and she needs to be there (this, she tells herself). she dresses up in black and paints her mouth red, and she spends the night down there with his sisters, offers her shoulder as a temporary replacement for the brother they won't get back.

she's home in time for dinner the next day, poker faced, and no one makes any comments about justino or where she's been. derek doesn't see her shed a tear beyond those that fell when she got the call, doesn't hear her after the one sob she stifles while in her bedroom, getting ready for the wake. nobody asks about him, after that thanksgiving.

but laura, laura used to say she would marry him, if he'd ask. she'd been seventeen, the summer before senior year, when the two of them had finally fixed up the camaro; maybe she'd been bluffing, maybe she hadn't. she'd said, in front of peter no less, "i'll have his kids, sure, why not? who else."

when they weren't in front of peter, she'd said, quieter, "no one else, honestly."

derek never quite understands why they'd split in the first place.

* * *

vii. laura suffers three miscarriages before she curls up in his arms and asks _what's wrong with me_. no one has an answer for her, and instead they go see the malabes again, mireya plying them with drinks and valencia watching him with black eyes.

she's the one who comes over, afterwards, serving manzanilla and atole and more mexican food than dominican. she fries plantains for them and scrubs the kitchen tiles while laura lies in their nest of blankets, derek picking up extra hours over winter break. he'll be twenty soon, and laura's just turned twenty-two. it doesn't feel like it's been so long, but it's been almost two years since the fire.

on new year's eve, six weeks since she lost the last baby ( _every time_ , she says, _9 weeks and it just dies_), laura crawls out of bed and says, "get dressed, we're going out," and they meet up with the malabe sisters at some cousin's party, cumbia blasting overhead. she goes straight for whatever drinks they've set up, and he finds himself between the two dominican girls, feeling more than a little lost.

"can you drink yet?" mireya says, and he answers honestly.

"sucks," she says, voice loud, before flouncing off - hip-checking valencia into him in the process.

val smiles, says, "you wanna get out here?" and has him blindfold her, later, when she's perched on the counter of her sister's empty apartment, inner thighs against his hips.

* * *

viii. phones have never been his forte. he's shit at answering texts - doesn't like the pre-programmed ringtones, the vibrate setting is annoying, who does he actually want to talk to regularly? val calls him, but she spends the night just as often, and laura and he are in the same apartment they've been in for five years. he's twenty-three years old and wondering if buying a ring is a good idea.

then laura leaves. "i'll be back," she says. "it won't be for long," she says. "this could be it," she says, and he doesn't have the heart to ask why now. what more do you need to know. i don't want to talk about kate argent.

laura knows. laura knows everything, and she wants to slit argent's throat, but she'll settle for second-hand information if she has to. for now, at least.

but then she stops answering the few texts derek sends - good morning, goodnight. her answers get vague. laura's never been one for theatrics, even if she knows how to have fun. instead of waiting on her any longer he catches a flight out, takes a couple days off from work. he's been debating whether or not to get his master's, what with val in the process of getting hers. he tells himself he'll ask laura, once beacon hills is sorted out.

(and this is how it ends: derek finds her, in pieces, his sister - his sister, his protector, his everything, his life - in the forest, at night, broken, dead, bleeding, gone. he smells another wolf on her but the scent is faded, not enough for him to pinpoint and track that bastard down. it's been a day or two or three since they got her, and derek wonders what he could have done to stop it. he calls mireya and tells her he's not coming back, says to tell val the same thing, that he's had it with new york.

he lies. he keeps laura's death for himself. later, they tell him she was eleven weeks pregnant.

he tries not to hurt the two high schoolers who come after him. he tries and tries and tries. kate argent finds him anyway.)

.

.

.


End file.
